Have You Created Your Social News Magazine Yet?

If you haven’t, try Flipboard, Paper.li, Zite, Currents or NewzSocial. These publishers allow you to create your own Social News Magazines in minutes. Your Social News Magazines help you discover, subscribe / curate and share content of your interest with your social network. A quick look at the frequently asked questions on this topic.

Does it help? Assume you are a financial analyst who loves travelling and Football. To keep yourself updated, you have downloaded various apps such as WSJ online, Fox Traveler, Ten Sports, Discovery, among others. For day-to-day news, you also follow TV and radio channels. Just try and calculate the time you must be spending to keep yourself updated. Didn’t think that way, right?

What if you could create your own social news magazine that helps you discover and curate content from various publishers on the topics of your interest? What if the magazine could allow you to post interesting content to various social networking sites? With these Social News Magazine publishers you can do it all.

What all topics do they cover? The social news magazines curate content on a wide range of subjects such as travel, politics, business, jazz, animal love, etc. Collectively, they are curating content from over 100,000 publishers. You can discover, curate, and share information channels based on your interest areas.

Which one should you choose? Try any of the ones mentioned above. Since they are all trying to establish themselves in this area, they all do more or less of the same thing with some unique variants. For example, NewzSocial allows you to create your own channels whereas others ask you to subscribe to topics. Through Flipboard you can share the content with your friends on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook whereas NewzSocial provides options to share content with your Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin connections. Besides, Flipboard offers another interesting feature such as “Flip it” that permits you to add any content that you like from the web into your magazine. Isn’t that cool! I have used NewzSocial in the past, and I liked it. One of my friends who happened to be a marketing automation guy is an advocate of Paper.li.

What should you do next? Try it if you are a knowledge buff. Or, take your time to evaluate these tools for you business or personal purposes before you sign up for one.

The 5 Habits Of All Effective Online Communicators: Secrets Worth Sharing

For all these years, I have been observing some of the most effective online communicators. They are popular. They are highly admired. They always get good responses. They have something common in them; they have mastered the 5 habits of all effective online communicators. Learn how to develop and master those habits.

The 1st Habit Of All Effective Online Communicators: Prepare Yourself.
Before you start writing, ask yourself the three magic questions: Why are you writing? Who are you writing for? Why should they read your write-up?
If you are absolutely clear about the objective, target audiences and message, then start writing now! What are you waiting for?


The 2nd Habit Of All Effective Online Communicators: Be Topical.
Be an avid reader and a keen listener if you want to be an effective online communicator. Keep yourself posted on the industry trends and market updates.
However, the job doesn’t end there! You need to develop a habit of finding relationships between the trends / incidents and your readers. For example, wouldn’t you want to write about “the top 10 tips and tricks of discount marketing for this Thanksgiving?”   


The 3nd Habit Of Effective Online Communicators: Talk to Individuals.
While writing for social media, why we forget that we are communicating to individual people; we are talking to the community of humans. This is a habit that needs to be adopted and then nurtured. Whether you are writing for your own blog or for your employer, do not forget that the readers are individuals. They can behave in the most amazing ways you can ever imagine. Paint dreams for your readers. Focus on emotions-driven writing. It always works. Beware! Remember, your readers are individuals and therefore, they can be crazy too. So, be mindful of what you are writing.


The 4th Habit Of All Effective Online Communicators: Give Call to Action.
It’s very simple. To get a response, you need to ask for it. Your readers don’t have time to assume or think about what you are looking for. So, please do pay attention to what you want from your readers. Do you want them to read further? So call it out. Maybe, you want them to buy. So, make it explicit. Or, you want them to write back. Then don’t shy away. Just ask.


The 5th Habit Of All Effective Online Communicators: Acknowledge Your Readers.
To learn how it works, do this exercise. I am sure you will find it interesting. Observe your favorite online communicator for the next few days. Respond to their write ups, blog posts, tweets and updates. You will observe that they all will reply to you back. Believe it or not, acknowledging your readers can do magic to your online write-ups. Try it and do share your experiences.